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Willson Contreras had some interesting comments following yesterday’s 7-6 loss to the D-Backs in which an angry contingent of Fenway fans booed him for not running hard up the first base line during his tenth inning groundout. But before we get to the quotes, here’s a look at the play just to make sure everybody’s up to speed:

Immediately after he arrived back in the dugout, the fuming first baseman engaged with one of the more aggressive fans and had them removed from the ballpark.

After the game, Chris Cotillo of MassLive got the follow quotes from Contreras regarding the incident:

“If you’re a smart fan, you know what’s going on,”

“I’m not gonna get hurt running on a ground ball. If you’re a real fan and you know baseball, there’s no case for me to hustle out of the box.”

“I’m not 100%. We never are, but I’m taking care of my leg. If I have to run, I push it a little bit. If I don’t, my manager has my back. I talked to him and he gave me permission to do whatever it takes to take care of my legs.”

“I was feeling better until last night when I full-stretched my leg and it grabbed me a little bit. My manager knows that.”

On one hand, Contreras is absolutely right. No single groundout is worth hustling over if it means risking blowing out your leg, particularly if you’re unlikely to beat it out anyway. It’s far more prudent to nurse it where he can and save the more taxing efforts for high leverage moments. In this larger context, it all makes sense.

Or, at least it would make sense if the Red Sox were in a slightly different place in the standings. Because while the philosophy holds water while zooming out from an individual play to an entire game, it all gets flipped on its head once you zoom out further from the perspective of an individual game to the remaining season as a whole.

Right now, thanks largely to the gluttonous owners and their absurdly bloated playoff structure, the Red Sox find themselves in the rather ridiculous position of being both far enough behind Tampa for the division lead that they’re extremely unlikely to catch them, but also far enough ahead of the third Wild Card cutoff that they’re extremely unlikely to fall out of a postseason spot. They’re so far removed from a meaningful tension point, Fangraphs gives them a 95.1 percent chance to make the playoffs, but just a 2.7 percent chance to win the division. In other words, there’s a 92.4 percent chance they’re going to end up in that best-of-three Wild Card round.

Circling back to Contreras and his leg, if we’re going to apply the principle of giving up on certain plays with a low likelihood of mattering in favor of long-term health, shouldn’t we apply that same concept to the season as a whole? More to the point: If Willson Contreras can only run some of the time, why isn’t he on the IL?

If his leg is bothering him enough that he needs to (rightfully) manage it on certain low leverage, low probability plays within a game, why aren’t the Red Sox demanding he do the same on certain low leverage, low probability games within a season?

Unfortunately, the single most important thing Contreras can do to help the team right now is be as ready to go as possible for a best-of-three series starting on September 29th. I detest that MLB has come to this, but it’s the reality of being in an oversaturated playoff field. If this was 20 years ago, with just one Wild Card available, the Red Sox and Yankees would be locked in a highly captivating duel for the last crumb on the table. Every game would matter, animosity would be building, and we’d be scoreboard watching like a hawk for six weeks.

In that world, Contreras’ approach of playing through injury in this manner would be on the money. But we don’t live in that world anymore. Instead, we’re basically sitting around seeing how healthy everybody can get for a best-of-three series at the end of September. (I can’t tell you how angry this makes me as a baseball fan!)

In any case, the Red Sox are already playing the “get ready for September 29th” game with Justin Slaten and Garrett Whitlock, who are both on the IL. And the funny thing is, not having either of them around to pitch in the top of the tenth yesterday was a whole hell of a lot more impactful in terms of why they lost that game than Contreras not running out his grounder. So if we’re going to swim in those waters, why be inconsistent about it?

Oh, and if your concern here has anything to do with the bottom falling out in a potential Contreras absence, don’t worry about it. This group has already proven they can handle the ship in short bursts without their stars. Since July 1st, Contreras has missed or left 11 games from either suspension, sickness, injury or rest, and the Sox are 10-1 in those contests.

Ultimately, the bottom line is this: Contreras is either healthy enough to run down the first base line consistently or he’s not, and if he’s not, he shouldn’t be in these games. They’re not important enough. (Thanks MLB!)

Lastly, the Red Sox medical staff has already had a disastrous year in terms of diagnosing the initial severity of injuries, and if this season ends up crashing and burning in part because Willson Contreras ends up out for the year on an injury that could have healed with rest, I’m going to be a whole lot angrier than the fans who were booing Contreras at Fenway Park yesterday.

Thirteen years ago, on the final Sunday in September, Skip Schumaker struck out. It was the last out in the last game of the regular season.

For the Dodgers, no big deal: They had won the National League West, and the playoffs were four days away.

For Dodgers fans that subscribed to Cox Communications, it turned out to be the start of a bizarre and protracted blackout that cost viewers the final years of Vin Scully and the golden years of three World Series championships.

After 4,560 days, the blackout is over.

Read more:California regulators approve $34.5-billion Charter-Cox merger

On Friday, for the first time in 13 years, Cox subscribers within the Dodgers’ broadcast territory will be able to watch the team on their local television home. Fans can find SportsNet LA on Channel 63 in Orange County, Channel 54 in Palos Verdes, Channel 36 in Santa Barbara and Channel 50 in Las Vegas.

How did this finally come to pass? Those channels no longer belong to Cox.

Charter Communications, the company responsible for getting SportsNet LA on as many cable, satellite and streaming options as possible, on Thursday closed its $34.5-billion purchase of Cox.

For Dodgers fans, the takeaway is this: It no longer matters that Cox did not want to pay Charter for the rights to air SportsNet LA. Charter made the 13 years of that moot by buying Cox.

Charter offers broadcast service under the Spectrum brand.

In 2013, with the team in the final year of its local television agreement with Fox Sports, the Dodgers announced it would launch a team-owned channel the following year.

Read more:Shaikin: MLB’s wild pitch: Using fan-despised TV blackouts as leverage against players

In exchange for the rights to market and distribute that SportsNet LA channel, Time Warner Cable agreed to pay the Dodgers $8.35 billion over 25 years. It was the last great regional sports network deal, with traditional broadcast audiences about to fragment amid the rise of streaming and cord-cutting.

The guaranteed rights fees are as sure of a revenue stream as anything in baseball, and the Dodgers’ success amid all that cash is one of the triggers for major league owners in their push for a salary cap.

However, the great regional sports network deals relied on cable and satellite subscribers paying for every channel in a bundle, most of which viewers never watched.

With DirecTV leading the resistance, cable and satellite providers balked at signing up for SportsNet LA: a few dimes per month per subscriber for a news or entertainment channel was fine, but they drew the line at $5 per month subscriber for a baseball channel.

No major Los Angeles outlet besides Time Warner Cable carried SportsNet LA until 2016, and then only because Charter bought Time Warner Cable. Even then, less than half the households in the Los Angeles market could get SportsNet LA.

In 2020, DirecTV and AT&T struck a deal with Charter, not so much to liberate Dodgers fans as to help the parties maintain a shrinking base of subscribers amid a proliferation of video options.

“I think I can speak for a lot of people who will say this is, maybe, long overdue,” Dodgers star Justin Turner said then.

Six years later, as a longtime Cox subscriber excited to see SportsNet LA for the first time, your humble correspondent can say this: I think I can speak for a lot of people who will say this is definitely long overdue.

Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Every pitcher in the Little League World Series works under a hard limit. Once a 12-year-old reaches 85 pitches in a game, he or she comes off the mound, and how many pitches they threw determines how many days they have to sit before they can pitch again.

The rules come from the Little League rulebook. They apply the same way in Williamsport as they do on any field in the country. Managers plan around them from the first day of the tournament, because a double-elimination bracket rewards teams with a third and fourth pitcher more than teams with one good arm.

Little League moved to pitch counts in 2007, replacing a system that limited pitchers by innings. Under the old rules a 12-year-old could throw well past 100 pitches in a six-inning game, a number big league starters rarely reach. A 2011 University of North Carolina study commissioned by Little League found the program cut shoulder injury risk among pitchers ages 8 to 13 by half.

Here is how the limits, the rest chart and the catcher restrictions work:

How many pitches can a Little League pitcher throw?

Limits go by league age, not calendar age.

• Ages 13 through 16: 95
• Ages 11 and 12, the World Series division: 85 pitches
• Ages 9 and 10: 75
• Ages 7 and 8: 50

When a pitcher hits the number they're done. The one wrinkle is that they can finish the batter they're facing, staying in until that hitter reaches base or is retired or the third out ends the inning. So you'll occasionally see a kid finish with 89 in a game that caps at 85, and nothing is wrong.

Warm-up pitches don't count. Only what a pitcher throws to a hitter counts.

The Phillies have the day off today before they will look to continue their recent streak of good play against the Cardinals this weekend at Citizens Bank Park. It’s probably for the best the off day is today, as it looks like it would have been incredibly difficult to play a ballgame with tonight’s forecasted weather.

On to the links.

Phillies news:

• ICYMI, the Phillies agreed to a major league deal with former All-Star starting pitcher Nestor Cortes.
• Zack Wheeler hasn’t been quite his usual ace self lately. He’s still working on making adjustments. ($)
• Derek Hill has been a godsend for the Phillies this season, coming through in multiple clutch moments despite pedestrian playing time and an unassuming stat line. Here’s a deep dive in exactly what all of that means from FanGraphs’ Michael Baumann.

MLB news:

• Dodgers owner Mark Walter’s businesses are shifting around billions of dollars as the mogul’s sports portfolio comes under federal investigation with the sale of his ownership of the Los Angeles Lakers. ($)
• The first of Jorge Polanco’s two seasons with the Mets is officially over, as he was placed on the IL yesterday and is headed for ankle surgery, ending his disastrous debut in New York.
• Statcast has a new metric that measures a first baseman’s ability to receive throws from other infielders. Here’s where notable players, including Bryce Harper, rank.

Hello, friends.

Pete Alonso hit a fair ball into the left field seats last night that should have been a go-ahead home run. Let’s just get that one out of the way right off the top. It’s unbelievable that the umpire did not call a fair ball live and it’s even more unbelievable that the replay center did not accept the decisive angle that would have given the Orioles a 4-3 lead. I don’t subscribe to any conspiracy theories. I think those people are just bad at their jobs.

It is one of those times I would have liked to see some fire from the manager. The figurative shadow of Earl Weaver looms over any major league field involving the Orioles. Craig Albernaz doesn’t have to do it Earl’s way, but he does need to do it some way. Just get caught being mad at the umpires when the process has screwed over your team. Point, yell, gesticulate, whatever, let the team know you’re not going to take it sitting down. Go around yelling at people until they eject you, then yell a little more.

Albernaz doesn’t seem to do this; he didn’t do it last night anyway. I don’t think it’s why the Orioles lost the game. They lost because they have an insufficient number of relievers to rely upon, and also because they went 0-6 with runners in scoring position. I just think it’s something that Albernaz should have done.

After this mishap, in classic 2026 Orioles fashion, a variety of stupid things occurred and the result was a 5-3 loss at the hands of the Yankees. Check out John Beers’s recap of the game for more of the not-so-lovely totals.

The Orioles bullpen being what it is lately, maybe Alonso getting the home run that he deserved would have only set up an even more tragic way of blowing the freshly-earned lead. Two runs were charged to Cam Sanders in an eighth inning outing where he hit two batters and walked another one. It’s not good to have to rely on guys of this ilk. You might get a few pleasant surprises out of them initially but guys like this are relatively cheaply available for a reason and the longer you give them, the more likely they’ll show you.

It’s a bad way to build a bullpen and these weaknesses have been exposed even more since Mike Elias decided to trade Tyler Wells ahead of the deadline. Grant Wolfram has fallen apart. Rico Garcia had his problems recently. Yennier Cano has hit a rough patch since being called into higher-leverage later-game situations. And those are just the ones you might have liked at one time. There are other, rougher names involved.

Perhaps there’s going to be at least one new face coming soon to the bullpen. Orioles beat writers, including The Baltimore Banner’s Andy Kostka, put this one out last night:

Is De León going to be anything? I don’t know. He was only promoted to Triple-A Norfolk recently and he’s got a 5.28 ERA and 1.83 WHIP through his first four games. Just last night, he walked three batters over the course of a scoreless inning of relief. He is the #7 prospect on MLB Pipeline’s recently-updated top Orioles prospect list. He becomes Rule 5 draft eligible this offseason. Perhaps they think he can be an extra weapon out of the bullpen. Perhaps they’ll even be right.

The 2026 American League playoff situation being what it is, the Orioles did not lose any ground in the wild card chase. The Blue Jays lost. The Guardians lost. The Tigers lost. The Rangers lost. Only the Twins were winners, so they now stand in the third wild card spot, half a game ahead of Texas and a touch farther ahead of others. Minnesota is off today. The Orioles only have to win to peel back the half game.

They need the win also to avoid being swept by the Yankees. I’ve gotta say, folks, it is entirely in character for the 2026 team to really rope people in with winning the first three games of that Rays series only to fall apart after that. They lost the next three games, each in fairly agonizing fashion. They try to avoid a fourth straight loss as the series concludes starting at 6:35 tonight. It won’t be easy: Gerrit Cole is pitching for New York. Kyle Bradish makes the start for the O’s.

Orioles stuff you might have missed

Which teams have suffered the most due to injuries? (FanGraphs)
You probably won’t be surprised to know that the Orioles are in the top 5 of this ZiPS-projected WAR lost to injury.

To try and get his bat going, Gunnar Henderson needed more than batting tweaks (Baltimore Baseball)
There are some encouraging signs for Henderson recently. Hopefully we continue to see encouraging signs.

Albernaz must trust starters when they earn it (The Baltimore Sun)
The Sun was taking Albernaz to task yesterday for pulling Shane Baz in Tuesday’s game. Many people took the opposite view, that Baz wasn’t pulled soon enough.

Alexander nearing rehab assignment and return (School of Roch)
Samuel Basallo is back, Blaze Alexander is close to a rehab assignment, is there enough time for things to come back together? On that question, make sure you vote in our poll that’s running this week.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

The most recent Orioles victory on today’s date came two years ago, when they knocked off the Mets by a 9-5 margin to pull into first place in the AL East by a half-game margin. Anthony Santander and James McCann each homered in the game. Dean Kremer was pretty good. Just four of the fifteen players who appeared in that box score for the team are on the 40-man roster right now.

There are a pair of former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 1996-2001 outfielder Gene Kingsale, and 1955-59 pitcher George Zuverink.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: Chilean Supreme Director Bernardo O’Higgins (1778), 23rd president Benjamin Harrison (1833), horror author H.P. Lovecraft (1890), baseball Hall of Famer Al López (1908), musician/actor Isaac Hayes (1942), TV weatherman Al Roker (1954), actor Ke Huy Quan (1971), and singer-songwriter Demi Lovato (1992).

On this day in history…

In 636, the expanding Rashidun Caliphate defeated the Byzantine Empire in the Battle of the Yarmuk, seizing control of the area of modern-day Syria from the Byzantines.

In 1648, France defeated a Spanish-Lorraine force in the Battle of Lens, a decisive victory that paved the way for the Peace of Westphalia and the end of the Thirty Years War later in the year.

In 1858, the theory of evolution developed by Charles Darwin was first published in a journal titled The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London.

In 1882, the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky had its premiere performance in Moscow.

In 1977, the Voyager 2 probe launched, actually launching before Voyager 1 even though it’s numbered second. The probe passed by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune over the next 12 years and is now over 13.3 billion miles from Earth.

**

And that’s the way it is in Birdland on August 20. Have a safe Thursday. Go O’s!

I’m writing on August 19, and Jake Bauers has a 146 OPS+ in 452 plate appearances. The last time a Milwaukee Brewer had a 146 wRC+ in a season in which they had even 350 plate appearances was in 2019, when Christian Yelich was in the second of his back-to-back MVP-caliber seasons.

Of course, there’s a good chunk of season left, so we don’t know how things will end up. But Jake Bauers, right now, is as good an offensive weapon as the Brewers have had in the past seven years — a span in which the Brewers have made the playoffs in all but one season and in which they’ve won four, perhaps soon to be five, division titles. On top of his on-field play, Bauers has also turned into a team leader; it was he who spoke out after the Brewers’ tough series in San Diego last week, and he who sparked their turnaround in Los Angeles, where they took three of four to salvage a solid road trip at the end of a 17-games-in-17-days stretch.

How did we get here?

If you told someone in 2017 that 10 years later Bauers would be one of the league’s best hitters (Bauers is eighth in the league in OPS+ at the start of play on Wednesday), that wouldn’t have surprised anyone. Bauers was a seventh-round pick of the Padres out of high school all the way back in 2013, but he was included in a massive trade after the 2014 season (one which included such highly regarded prospects and young players as Wil Myers, Trea Turner, and Joe Ross) that sent him to Tampa Bay. In the Rays system, Bauers thrived; in 2016, when he was just 20, he hit .274/.370/.420 with 14 home runs and 28 doubles at Double-A Montgomery, and he started appearing on top 100 prospect lists heading into 2017. Another strong season in 2017 (.263/.368/.412 as a 21-year-old at Triple-A Durham) put him on the major league doorstep. He was 22, and Baseball America had him as a top 50 prospect.

After that, things got rocky. He debuted with the Rays in 2018 and slugged a bit with 11 homers and drew a bunch of walks in 388 plate appearances, but he hit just .201. After the season, he was sent to Cleveland in a big trade that ended up with Carlos Santana in Cleveland and Yandy Díaz in Tampa (the Mariners took back some cash, a pick, and the shell of Edwin Encarnación). Bauers played 117 games for Cleveland in 2019 but hit just .226/.312/.371 (a 78 OPS+). He didn’t make Cleveland’s roster in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and thus didn’t play baseball; in 2021, he got off to a poor start and was traded yet again, to Seattle, but the names in the trades that Bauers was included in at this point were losing some shine; Seattle sent a pitcher named Damon Casetta-Stubbs who never got above High-A.

The struggles continued in Seattle, and Bauers could only manage a minor league deal as a free agent in 2022. He played 29 games in Cincinnati’s system and hit .135/.276/.271. The Yankees brought him on and he hit .226/.352/.406 for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Things finally turned around a bit for the now 27-year-old Bauers in 2023; it was just a 24-game sample, but Bauers hit .359/.485/.897 (!) with 11 home runs in 97 plate appearances before he earned another chance in the big leagues with New York. The batting average was still poor, but Bauers did flash some power; 12 homers in 272 plate appearances for the Yankees in 84 games in 2023.

The Brewers traded for him after the season, sending a couple of lottery tickets, Jace Avina and Brian Sanchez, for him. As we all know here, the struggles continued for Bauers: in 117 games and 346 PA in 2024, he hit only .199. He did walk a lot, and he hit 12 homers, and Pat Murphy seemed to like him. He stuck around in 2025. Through 60 games played, Bauers was hitting .197 with five home runs in 151 plate appearances. On July 18, he went on the injured list with shoulder inflammation.

What changed?

It’s not entirely clear what happened in the four-ish weeks that Bauers spent on the injured list, but something happened. Bauers has talked about simplifying his approach, and in interviews these days you’ll hear him talk often about mental things like remaining even-keeled, not letting himself get too high or too low, valuing his family, and keeping a long view of things.

Whatever happened, Bauers was a different hitter. After a few games shaking the rust off, Bauers hit .360/.458/.560 in 22 games in September. In six postseason games, he hit .308 with a double and a homer in 14 plate appearances. This season, he has shown that whatever happened in that small sample at the end of the 2025 season has endured.

So what actually happened?

The fact is, Bauers always had some good indicators. Look at his Statcast pages going back to 2023; Bauers was always good at finding the barrel and hitting the ball hard. He didn’t chase much. He always swung the bat hard — he’s a strong guy. But the thing that really sticks out is strikeouts. Check out his strikeout percentages:

• 2023: 34.9% (unqualified on Statcast, but bottom five-percent-ish)
• 2024: 34.1%, 2nd percentile
• 2025: 27.1% (unqualified, but 15th percentile-ish)
• 2026: 24.8% (27th percentile)

Bauers still strikes out a lot, but he is vastly improved from four years ago, and the change that has made to his other indicators is enormous. While he was always getting his barrel on the ball and hitting it hard, he wasn’t putting the ball in play enough to be a major factor. But now look at the effect the increased balls in play have had on his expected batting average and slugging percentages:

• 2023: .221 xBA, .475 xSLG
• 2024: .199 xBA, .389 xSLG
• 2025: .234 xBA, .457 xSLG
• 2026: .260 xBA, .484 xSLG

Bauers has also always been an elite walk-taker; I mentioned the chase percentage as a major strength earlier, and to illustrate the point he was in the 88th percentile in walk percentage even when he was badly struggling in 2024. Bauers has sported walk percentages of 14.7 and 14.6% in the last two seasons; he’s in the top 10 in walk percentage this year and would’ve been last year if he’d qualified.

Bauers is a poor fielder. His reputation as a good defensive first baseman is merely a reputation at this point — his numbers don’t back it up. He does offer the Brewers value by being able to play in the outfield, and it has enabled them to opt for some offense-heavy lineups during times when they’ve really needed a boost. But let’s not pretend that Bauers is by any means a good, or even decent, defensive outfielder.

That does not diminish his value to the team, though. With Christian Yelich and William Contreras struggling badly for huge swaths of the 2026 season, with Jackson Chourio still in the “young and streaky” phase of his career (and absent for the first six weeks of the season), the Brewers needed someone to step up and lead the offense. Brice Turang has done his part, but Bauers is the guy who has been there all year, steadily. Bauers has five more homers than any other Brewer, he’s walked more than every Brewer except Turang (who has two more walks in 75 more plate appearances), his OPS+ is 12 points higher than the next highest (Andrew Vaughn) and 25 points higher than another player with 300 plate appearances (Turang).

Where do we go from here?

It’s certainly a question as to whether Bauers will be back to ply his trade with the Brewers beyond this season. He is a free agent, and he’s played well enough this season that he’s very possibly going to be the best free agent first baseman on the market. The Brewers very well may offer Bauers the qualifying offer (a decision that would be made before the looming lockout); would Bauers take it?

My guess is no — he’ll be 31 before the postseason is over, and according to Spotrac, Bauers’ career earnings are currently less than $10 million. I mean, I’d be happy to take that for my own career earnings, but we’re talking relatives here; this will be Bauers’ best chance to lock in generational wealth for his family. The roughly $22 million qualifying offer is a lot (and the Brewers should offer it, with Brandon Woodruff coming off the books), but at his age and with his limited track record of success beyond this season, I strongly suspect Bauers would be more likely to take a longer-term, higher-value deal even if the average annual value was lower.

Could the Brewers still be in on that deal? I’m looking at something like Christian Walker’s three-year, $60 million deal signed with the Astros before the 2025 season. Walker definitely had a longer record of success at that point — he’d averaged over three WAR per 162 games over the previous six seasons — but he was also entering his age-34 season, three years older than Bauers. Three years and $60 million would be a lot for the Brewers. Would Bauers settle for something like three years and $45 million? Or two years and $40 million? It’s hard to say, and it’s kind of difficult for me to believe that, given the offensive struggles of some of the league’s wealthiest teams this season, there wouldn’t be a team out there that would beat an offer like that. Plus, we’re all working in hypotheticals here, anyway — we do not know exactly what sort of limits on free agent contracts may or may not exist after the lockout.

(One other quick note that could apply here: if the Brewers do offer Bauers the qualifying offer and he declines it and signs elsewhere, Milwaukee does recoup a draft pick. But where that pick ends up could be a question; under current rules, if he signed for less than $50 million, it would be after the second round; if more than $50 million, it’s after the first round.)

For now, let’s worry about next year next year. Bauers has been immense for the Brewers this season, and given how long it took him to get to his place, it’s a good story, too. He’s probably going to end up with some down-ballot MVP votes this year, a nearly unthinkable outcome after the first couple years of Bauers’ Brewers tenure. Great teams often need a player like this to step up unexpectedly, and Bauers, at a bargain price, is doing that for the 2026 Brewers as they march toward the league’s best record.